Wall Unit Project

Wood Gloat:My truck can barely carry this pallet.124 pieces 23”W X 41”L of A-1 Maple Veneer on 3/4” PBC
From a local furniture company liquidating assets after bankruptcy.Bargain basement price of $100 for the load.I picked this up Friday during my lunch hour.
It took an hour and 45 minutes to unload this once i got it home.Okay, so the first 40 minutes was cleaning a space out in the garage. Still, 1:45 wore me out before dinner.
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The challenge is to make a 127 1/2” long countertop that looks good using only 41” long plywood peices.
A trick I learned a long time ago is to place an alternate grain strip between end grain splices. It looks way better, in my opinion, than end grain to end grain joinery.
Also, I am using only plywood for this top—no solid wood. The build up is a little different here.The front edge is a maple veneer that I had left over from another job.
The thing about...

I wasn’t gonna do it. The original plan was for a dark Walnut color. But I only had one quart of it left and I knew it was discontinued and I might not be able to get any more of it. That’s not a good thing half-way through a project like this.Besides, what if I want to do other projects in the house with this color?
So, I opened my metal storage cabinet where I keep my finishing materials and perused the cans. I had already made color samples of most of these and decided th...

I got the countertop scribed to the wall and installed last night. It was a nice fit and no caulking was needed.
On weeknights I can get 2 to 3 hours of shop time after dinner and I was particularly tired when I got home from work.
With about an hour left in me, I started cutting and assembling the floating shelves that go above the counter.
Part of me feels that if I had more clamps I could’ve put all six of them together before bedtime.
By 10pm I was out of clamp...

It was one of those weekends where I did a lot of work, but it doesn’t LOOK like I did a lot of work.
I kept thinking about this giant shelf I am putting above this wall unit with lighting in it. Cleats alone aren’t going to be enough support. I need some brackets.
The Space for the Mosaic panel gives me room for some brackets, but I was going to need to fabricate them.The local HD had some 3/4” tube steel in 36” lengths and I took it to my dads house where he h...

With the shelves done, I need to make and install the mosaic panel before the top shelf can be installed above it. The panel will be on french cleats and will be locked into place by the top shelf.
Since I am working with a large number of 23” X 41” panels, I am having to assemble the 58” X 64” mosaic backer panel using several smaller parts. This will all be hidden by the mosaic veneers on the face, so it only needs to be flat and strong. I managed to re-use ...

I made insert frames with some scrap wood and my wife and I wrapped and stapled the fabric to them.
I used a simple jig to drill 5mm system holes for the hinge plates.
Free-swinging Blum CLIP hinges were a snap.You can see the fabric wrapped frames from the backside of the door here.
The doors are all hung.
It just so happened that my brother and nephew came by today and I talked them into hefting the top shelf in the air for me. It is just sitting on top of the b...

All of you who’ve been following this blog know that the Mosaic Panel design has been the main sticking point from the beginning.
Finally, I was flipping channels the other day and saw Katie Couric’s new show and she has a mosaic panel in the background of her set. The colors and style are perfect for this wall unit!
I paused the screen and got out my phone and took a picture.
I started with a Honey Maple Stain over a sealer coat, then, using the pics as a guide, I l...